1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to visual display systems. More specifically, this invention relates to visual display systems, which provide a large field of view for accurately viewing a computer generated environment.
2. Description of Related Art
Many simulation applications, such as aircraft pilot training ground vehicle driver training and entertainment, require or are enhanced by a very large field of view visual display system that will allow the user to accurately view the surrounding environment. Not only does a typical user need to see directly ahead, but often is required to view imagery to either side and in some applications a user is also required to see behind, above and/or below the user's position in the simulator. Also, for many training or entertainment tasks, it is important to provide the capability of high resolution in the visual display system.
When it is desirable to provide a large field of view display system with high resolution than is typically achievable with a single conventional video display device it is often necessary to mosaic or tile images from multiple video sources. It is possible to place adjacent video display devices together to increase the size of the viewable image and consequently the size of the field of view. The problem with this approach is that all known display devices inherently have physical packaging that extends beyond the boundary of the usable display surface. Therefore, whenever two or more of these display devices are abutted together there will always be a gap between the adjacent displays that prevents the user from viewing an uninterrupted continuous displayed scene.
A wide variety of display systems adapted for use with computer-generated imagery are well known in the art. Prior techniques include optically overlapping projected imagery from multiple projectors, which project onto a flat screen or a spherical projection screen, and rear projection onto a set of translucent projection screens that are arranged around the observer in an abutted fashion to provide a continuous scene with gaps between the screens.
Although not necessarily “prior art”, the reader is referred to the following U.S. patent documents for general background material. Each of these patents is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety for the material contained therein.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,003,080 describes a large screen display system for video modulated collimated light.
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U.S. Pat. No. 5,050,965 describes a color display formed by staking two or more birefringent elements that are tuned to provide different spectral characteristics.
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U.S. Pat. No. 5,124,818 describes an LCD display system formed by stacking two or more independently operated LCD elements.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,130,794 describes a panoramic image based virtual reality display system.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,132,839 describes a display video apparatus which provides a three dimensional image.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,157,503 describes a near-infinity image display system.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,241,389 describes a video display system which compensates for video processing delays in multiple, inter-coupled video processing subsystems.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,300,942 describes a light valve such as an active matrix LCD between crossed polarizers.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,337,068 describes a backlighted color LCD display formed by placing a single matrix of liquid crystal devices over a bank of red, green and blue fluorescent lamps.
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U.S. Pat. No. 5,689,315 describes a light valve apparatus.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,701,445 describes an apparatus for generating pictures that comprises a memory device, an address generator, a vertical position detector, a register, a horizontal position counter, a processor and a state machine.
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U.S. Pat. No. 6,078,371 describes a micro lens-equipped liquid crystal device capable of ensuring a high picture quality.
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U.S. Pat. No. 6,157,420 describes a projection-type display apparatus that includes a light source; a color separating/synthesizing device; and three reflection-type display devices.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,163,349 describes a micro lens array provided on a light-outgoing side of a monochromic LCD element.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,195,184 B1 describes a real-time, dynamic, free space-virtual reality 3-D image display system.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,252,564 B1 describes a process for creating an electronically addressable display.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,266,037 B1 describes a wafer based active matrix reflective light encoding system.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,266,113 B1 describes a reflection type liquid crystal display device.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,330,112 B1 describes an optical modulator and image projection display apparatus.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,332,684 B1 describes a projection type color image display apparatus that includes: a light source section, a first and second fly-eye lens array; a micro lens array; a single image display device; a color separator; and a projection lens.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,346,928 B1 describes a method of presenting a complete image on the retina of an observer.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,351,335 B1 describes a foveated display.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,356,332 B1 describes a matrix substrate that includes a plurality of conductive members constituting pixels provided on a substrate.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,393,163 B1 describes a system for automatically generating a mosaic from a plurality of input images.